Black River by Lowe Tom

Author:Lowe, Tom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kingsbridge Entertainment
Published: 2014-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

Dave Collins sat at the Tiki Bar, eating from two shrimp cocktails while sipping a Guinness and reading an article in Smithsonian Magazine. He wore a white Panama hat, Hawaiian floral print shirt outside his shorts. He glanced up as Kim walked behind the bar toward him. She said, “Must be a good story you’re reading. You’ve barely put a dent into your shrimp.”

Dave looked over the rims of his bifocals and nodded. “It’s an article about the pirate, Blackbeard. The man, more than any other, truly embodied what a real swashbuckling pirate was in that period.”

Kim laughed. “And now they’re lawyers and bankers.” Then she bit her lower lip, inhaled and folded her arms across her breasts. “And they’re stalkers.”

“Did he come to the Tiki Bar again?”

“No. But he left a second rose under my car windshield wipers, and he left another note. Typewritten, just like the first one.”

“What’d he write?”

Kim glanced around the bar, a family of four taking their seats at a far table, ceiling paddle fans circulating the warm air. “All he said was this: ‘Let us go home and cultivate our virtues.’ I can’t even get a restraining order against this guy because I can’t prove it’s him.”

“Have you told Sean?”

“Not yet. I just found the second rose this morning. Sean’s so wrapped up in his investigation that…” She blew out a deep breath.

“Kim, I have a feeling this is or will become part of his investigation.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not trying to frighten you, but what if the guy sending you these Confederate roses is the man who shot Jake Jordan on the movie set? And what if that painting Sean’s looking for is somehow a part of this puzzle?”

“I just got a chill and it’s eighty degrees at the marina.”

“Tell Sean immediately.” Dave opened his tablet. “Using the phrase and key words, Civil War, maybe we can find the original source of that last message that came with the rose.” He keyed in the words and grunted.

“What’s it say?”

Dave glanced up and then read from the screen. ‘Let us go home and cultivate our virtues’…it was quoted from Robert E. Lee speaking to some of his men after Lee surrendered to Grant in Appomattox, Virginia.”

Kim shook her head, pulling a strand of dark hair behind one ear. “What’s it mean? Why would some dysfunctional re-enactor write that and think I’d have any clue what it meant?

“Because he’s not speaking directly at you. He’s speaking to a fantasy of you.”

“Dave, that’s so crazy. Why me?”

“I think it’s because he’s the same guy, the same re-enactor, that Sean said had a fascination with the painting that was stolen from the historic plantation where they’re shooting the movie Black River. To some extent, you have a resemblance to the woman in the painting.”

Kim exhaled slowly. She reached under the bar and lifted up her purse. She glanced around the Tiki Bar, opened the purse and pulled out a .22 pistol. “I bought this. I’m taking shooting lessons at a gun range.

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